Holy Words

It is not even four in the morning. I have arisen from sleep to have bowl of cereal and work on the rough draft of a new novel, one that will not even see the light of my proofreading pen until sometime in the middle of the next year. As a writer for a very small press I am always wondering about where my writing goes, who should be reading it. I am convinced most modern writing now not only goes to the wrong places, but is written for the wrong people. As a writer who masquerades as a student and spends a fair amount of his time in academia I see that most of the writing, fictional and no fictional that sets itself up as serious is also bound to be incestuous. Professors of nothing writing to other professors, impressing each other with the strength of their weak words. Conferences as self-fulfilling and infertile as masturbation where men and women hammer together abstruse words into obtuse concepts.
What we need is alternate altars where to consecrate our words. What we need now are other sacred spaces to congregate and set down the words which change the world.
This week the High Holidays came to an end. The last day, Simhat Torah, was when the Torah is completed and then begun all over again, when the Torah is danced around the house and we reflect on the holy and magic power of the written word, and the word received. I put on the house altar, not only the Torah, but my own novels as well as books of mythology that had changed me, reading their ends and thier beginnings and processing them about the room. All of our lives are guided by holy words. All of our words should be Torah.

trouble

Life is trouble.
-- Zorba the Greek

Life is full of so much trouble and yet we go on with it. Not because we are afraid of death either. In the face of the troublesomeness of life, what do we find in it? From now on I think this is what Witch's Blood will examine if we haven't been examining it already.

SIT N' BITCH !

TODAY'S BITCH

Today's bitch comes from Bree Dunscombe of Indianapolis, IN.

Right now I hate my money situation, mostly because of credit card debt and student loans. The latter were worth it; but every time I think about the stupid shit I charged before, and how I'm paying for it now, I want to scream. Sometimes it feels like I'll never dig myself out of the grave I've thrown myself into.

Thanks for letting me vent!

THANKS FOR BITCHING !

Witch's Blood

In these dark days between the full moon of Yom Kippur and the new moon of All Hallows, I enter a different phase and start living in a different place. I don't mean this in a good way. I guess it isn't in a bad away either. The blissful joy I felt I no longer feel. I am discontent, even when I am not anxious. Whatever my body looks like my spirit has tentacles that reach out for other things, things I don't know... Something is telling me... "Go deeper."

Why we write here...

On the heels of that miserable passage I realize that I could have written the same thing down in my journal, and it would have lacked all power. Now I know why we blog here. If I'd written it down the words would have died and ended with me, still in my head. Here they are confessed. I write them down, but someone else will read them, hopefully a friend, sometimes a friend I didn't even know existed. The things leaves me the the Scpecoat at Yom Kippur. I think this is why I write, because the thing must leave me. My emotions cannot stay only my emotions, they have to go out and let people in. We have to share these things. This is the true power of confession.

Confession? That the friend I think I love is blathering on and on about how well he did on his exam while I am thinking about the sudden frustrations and troubles all cast upon in getting the exam back. I have written two novels, am putting one out for wide publication and keep my business to myself. He scores and ninety-five and won't stop talking. Suddenly I wonder what it would be like to dash his brains out on the pavement. My life has always been violent like this. I never feel ho hum about anything. I'm not even banal about my own banality.

I don't know what reading this does for you, but I know what writing it does for me. Whoever has left, I hope you come back. Whoever has been here all along (Frema, Helen, London) put your feet up and bitch.

Life

Yom Kippur

Is anyone out there? I wouldn't be surprised if no one was. The last time I was here was before school started, and I just looked at that last passage which was stupid but accurate. I've found myself in a new, great, strange place.

I'd been thinking about coming back to Witch's Blood for some time and I hope it's permanent. Today, during the fast I new something had to happen. I knew I would come back and leave a note here. My book is finally fit to be seen, so go see it: http://www.lulu.com/content/144803

The other day I got a first copy of the new novel, the one where I look over it and see all the mistakes and typos before the world does. I feel accomplished. Not impressed with myself, but rather like I had a duty to these stories, these first two in particular, and I have seen them to the point where they are in print, where the first one can be read. I have kept faith with them. So many changes have occured in this one year since last Yom Kippur.

Follow

This is the dance darlings. Tomorrow morning I go into something I don't know anything about, or not that much about. I've pretty much dropped out of the Masters program I wanted so badly because it turned out so badly and now I'm going to study what I want to and what I know so little about. I don't know the details of the road I travel or even it's end, but I know that what it is is life.

The Lord took me by the hand. Blindly I followed...
--Sister Madeleine of Jesus

Bliss

I wanted to thank you all. Especially you, Helen. I will put a link up to the book, but when I feel like it, and when I have the time.

London, I have a message for you. It seems that you are one of those people unfortunate enough to have a bliss. Most people don't. They don't understand that's the secret. Most people are pretty common. That's why it's called being common. But some people really have something they need to do, want to do. They will betray themselves if they don't do it. This is their passion, their bliss. I don't care what Oprah says, everyone doesn't have one. But you do. As Joseph Campbell once said: follow your bliss.

I am at a place where I am going to need all the strength and insight in the world. I need to make a great change.

I think.

Janus

Things happen by accident, or at least, I suppose, the important ones. We stumble into them. People may remember last year when I was excited to start my own e-press and several people were going to be part of it. Well, we know the way that went, and I put away the idea of being an editor or a publisher in any sort of way.

And then, by accident, when I began to look for a new publisher for the Hidden Lives... I became part of Lulu, the most wonderful writing cooperative and a great alternative to artists who don't want to be ripped off... If you are willing to undergo a lot of work. And, by accident, I found myself with my own publishing house: Janus Books. It is a real thing now. Amazing. And it is mine.

you are my secret
my sweet beautiful secret
wrapped in darkness and
affection
i can't even pronounce the word
over you
the word of love
i turn you over in my thoughts
and send you to bed

Saturday

A friend of mine is scheduling a couple of trips overseas. I'm reminded of the song "Why oh why do the wrong people travel." When you go someplace, aren't you supposed to bring it back with you, to enter into the experience, to be affected even if you don't effect anyone you meet. But she just sort of goes to places for a few days because you're supposed to.

I can never explain immediately why I feel how I feel about a thing, or about the lives of the friends I came of age with. All of their lives are so different and yet, different from mine. It may be an American thing, but most of the people I know sort of drift from thing to thing, maybe--sometimes--the thing is even a pleasure. But there isn't much meaning. There isn't a lot going on. It's as if the old ideas of purpose, calling and meaning are... just that... old ideas.

Back

If I'm going to come back to Witch's Blood, then I better come back and have something to say. I had better observe something about the world. This summer I've heard a lot from friends who talk vaguely about doing something, about finding some sort of purpose. when I was little growing up in the Church we were taught about those who were saved and those who were lost. I still believe in loss and salvation, but it seems to me that salvation will not come from espousing a creed. It comes from exactly what Jesus was talking about: giving ones life away, giving the sort of security and control that comes from small mindedness and tunnel vision and beginning to live, to pick up on how we fit in. Salvation begins when we know the things we have to do and what doesn't need to be done, when we begin to move in a necessary direction. And of course, this direction is hard to find, for us now, in this age divided from our spirits and from earth the flow of things is difficult to fall into.

A Virgin Again

I don't know what to call this. I want to give this the title: "I'm back." But I gave that to my last article, and it wasn't true. There's been a lot going on, so Witch's Blood has been a pretty dead site. Most of my nonfiction writing has been dedicated to an essay collection, and that's done now. We took a brief rest, and after that rest it's time to come back to the WB.

There are so many things on my mind, and a few things to tell. The book (The Hidden Lives of Virgins) is being re-edited and republished by Lulu press. I was sitting with it one day and I said, "You want something from me? What do you want?"

Make me pretty. Finish me, it said. When it wasn't in print any kind of print was fine, but after it was printed I wanted a great deal for it that the first edition didn't have. I was editing the first part of a new book and looking for a publisher for it when I found a new publisher and something said, "Make Virgins beautiful and correct all of its errors before you move on." So, if you've gotten the old copy, oops. And if you haven't then please, please wait for the new edition.

What a ride this has been.

We may not be able to tell exactly what is wrong, but there is always the something. We can’t think properly, life is gone, we are weeping, or we want to, even in the happiest moments there is that black dog, that wrong feeling.
It is the esbat of the dark moon, and tonight I offer up juice and alcohol, salt and water and incense at the altar of the spirits. I remember the spirits of this house and of the earth. Everything has a spirit, all spirits ought to be served, especially those who cannot serve themselves, or those it is our responsibility to serve. Perhaps for a storyteller the chief spirits to be served are those of our characters. They are given to us and no one else, to be fostered. Sing to them, talk to them, burn incense for them, cajole them, be them, see them.
The other day I went to the beach. We went. It was cool because spring is late in getting here, and the beach was nearly empty in the first few days of May. I remember years before I used to go the beach with someone else and there were so many people. I would look at the people. There was this one boy, maybe thirteen, with bright blue eyes in a pale face. He wasn’t handsome, really, but he was stunning. His knees were drawn to his chest, and he had dark hair plastered to his head. He became Roy Cane, and in a way Ian. He became a template for the men of the Cane family. The way when h

Lysias

Titian has a painting titled The Flaying of Lysias. The story: the satyr Lysias challenges the god Apollo to a contest of the arts, whoever wins is allowed to flay the other. Lysias, challenging the gods, that is to say, going beyond himself loses, and he is being flayed in the painting, all of his skin exposed, Apollo gently takes off his flesh, almost lovingly.

In Michelangelo's painting of the Last Judgment, Saitn Bartholomew rides up to Christ. Bartholomew who himself was flayed alive. He is holding up his skin, but anyone who knows art a little realizes that this empty flesh, the flayed flesh in not that of Bartholomew, but of Michelangelo. It is his grey, stripped face, his stonemason's body represented in the hanging skin.

So this is a theme in art. Here is a question for the artist to ask: I ask it myself. Around this question comes many, many troubling revelations which assault our assumption about success. Most of the people we will ever meet are fully prepared to be mediocre. If you would succeed at all times you can only do that which you are sure of doing flawlessly.

But now so the artist. We must always go beyond ourselves and in a way. Whether we hold up the flesh to Christ, or are flayed by Apollo, we always challenge the God within, we always respond to that call, and in some way, we always lose. So winning is not really the question. The question the consummate artists must ask is this: have I offered myself up? Have I gone beyond and ripped off the skin? Have I been merciless on myself and gone into myself? Surely this is the only way. Have I been flayed?

Believe it or not, the only answer that brings peace and rest is, "yes."

Change Your Nature

The days of this season have been marked by a certain grace. Lately, I’ve been rising to the occasion in many matters, and the occasions have reciprocated, rising to me.
The book came on Saturday, and my first nature was to keep it to myself, to tell no one. But I am reminded of the line in The Road to Coorain. Perhaps you should change your nature. I changed it to be one who shared the good fortune. People actually do like to hear good news. Some people need to hear good news. I changed my nature to share this good news with my mother and father. I so desired to keep it a secret, to maintain my privacy. I think I have clung so to privacy because for a very long time it was all I had. Mother opened the book enough to see what she thought was the dedication, what was really an acknowledgment. She told everyone how it was dedicated to her. She thanked me and kissed me and I, knowing she will never read this book—at least not carefully—did not tell her that if she flipped over the page, it would say, For Helen.

yesterday--one clear second
of holiness
i recalled your face

Magic and Miracles

Magic and miracles take time. God may be slow because he has to be. We are so fixated on microwaves. We think prayers should be like pushing those buttons and hearing the little motor zap radiation into all of our wishes.

God remembers our wishes, our deepest desires long after we have forgotten them. It is the fifth week of Easter, the last before Ascension Sunday and then Pentecost. For a long time now there is a peace I have longed for, an end to disputes with one person, and end to these bad feelings, this wall. This morning in church, I turn and catch his eye. He is looking at me. I wish him peace, something I think it took my a long time to truly wish, and so I never would have done. To my surprise he says it back. Miracles are small like that.

My God a lilac
i want always
to be in gentle bloom
like the late spring
heavy with the scent
of that purple
flower

A New Day

Just as The View was getting really lame, the show was preempted and suddenly we were at the Vatican watching smoke of an indeterminate color spew out of an itty bitty chimney in the Sistine Chapel. Everyone was excited and irked, waiting for the bells to toll out and let us know there was a new Holy Father. I couldn't leave the television set. I grabbed my rosary. Then the smoke was white, and even the news reporters were excited. The crowd in Saint Peter's Square was jubilant. And then the bells began to rang. They rang and rang and the Square began to fill. I started sending jubilant e-mails. I called my mother, and then I got off the phone and waited for the new pope to come out.
When his name was announced, since none of this was English, it took a while to know who it was. I was on my knees, crossing myself actually, full of joy at who it would be.
And then God taught a valuable lesson.
For who should the new pope be but one of my least favorite cardinals. There was Joe Ratzinger, as the new Holy Father.
I shot off of my knees immediately and almost fainted. It was just too much. Benedict the XVI is Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.
I have had a day now to digest what many people never do. The lesson of what true love and respect are. I don't think I've ever sided with this man, in fact, I've always felt dead against him. And I won't pretend that I had any love for the last pope while he was alive. But seeing the newly created Benedict the XVI I was filled with nothing short of a great love. He is the first pope I have ever seen created, and I love this man.
The truth is, and conservatives and liberals will both have to understand this: God is not a conservative or a liberal. God has a strange and wonderful way of doing things without taking polls and it really is for us to sit and see what happens. I have a strange, strange feeling that this coming papacy will prove to be a beautiful thing.

In Jerusalem

I've been reading Karen Armstrong's Jerusalem, dizzied by the three thousand plus years of Jew fighting Jew, Jew fighting Christian, Christian against Christian and then Muslim, different peoples, all lacking respect for one another, all coating their hands in blood. Now and again arises a teacher, arises the incarnation of God and the example of light and yet none listen.

Tonight, at the end of the long weekend, I purify the altars and light candles getting ready to pray. I open the Common Prayer Book and the first reading is from Wisdom. How like the Anglican Church to have a reading notin the King James Bible. Almost as soon as I thought I had left the Catholic Church for good, I was at Mass one day, at the Anglican Church and we prayed to the Blessed Virgin for the Bishop of Rome. Incidents like that remind me you never leave anything and this life cannot be lived in bitterness. It is hard to be a true Christian because it is hard to be true.
I, so recently returned to Rome, am having one of those moments again as I have to search for one of my Catholic Bibles in order to get today's reading from Wisdom. I am on my knees, coated in dust, overturning the entire room, finding nothing. I know I thought I had washed my hands of Catholicism, but God, how could I have tossed away a Bible! I can find my Koran, I can even find the Cathchism of the Catholic Church. But I am over a half hour looking for this Bible.
When all else fails, still yourself and pray. But I cannot still myself. Still I pray anyway and under the bed, past a shoebox and a bundle of twigs (don't ask) covered in dust is the old Catholic Bible, the one Allison gave me all those years ago. How do I feel about it? About this Church I was born into? About the English one I entered into? And about this whole Christianity business? How the hell do I feel about it?

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, coated in blood.

On the CD player the Franciscans of Jerusalem (who sound very Greek) are singing before the Holy Sepulchre. In God's name we have done so much violence and brought about so much foolishness. And still, beauty, incredible, terrible beauty remains. When the light glistens on the chalice, when the monks sing the long, doleful note that thrills the soul, when one hand touches another in church, and the phrase "I'm sorry," is not longer necessary... there is that terrible, glorious splendor.

And blowing the dust off of this old Bible I know that the story of Jerusalem is my story.

Territories

I almost bought something stupid on ebay. In fact, the bid was secured. It was for a portable air conditioner on the cheap, and then I saw the instructions... just add ice... It was a grill you plugged into a cooler, thus transforming a humble old Igloo into an air conditioner.

Bad news. Bad news.

Life is full of silly moments mixed with the sacred.

It am coming to terms with a truth in worship. Often, in prayer we bump up against something we don't know. There is no name. We have stumbled into uncharted territory. We won't to rush back, or put it in a box. We are disconcerted. We do not know that we have been given a gift. We do not know that in that moment we have left ourselves, and slid into grace.

Persian Flaws

I was watching something really good tonight, one of my favorite shows. Since I've gotten a television I have favorite shows again. I found myself thinking, "This was a great hour. I could never write something like this!"
No, I have to remind myself that is just it. When we find something good, it must be applauded. One good story does not compete against another. It is not for me to write something "as good as" or "better than," but to make something that simply is good. Something with life.
Now, after so long, the book is coming out, and I know at last what Virginia Woolf lamented when talking about all writing coming out crippled. The writing came out well enough, but I see things I would change, errors the publisher made, errors I made. This is no flawless book. I wince at every error and think of people catching them. If I could I would correct it over and over again.... And then it would never be published. We are so addicted to perfection, but the flawed book that exists in reality is far more powerful than the perfect book in my brain.

No matter how intricate a Persian rug may be, the rugmaker always leaves a flaw, or puts one in. This is called the Persian Flaw. It serves to remind us that nothing made is made with out flaws. Our flaws are foibles. Are foibles are our cracks. And through these cracks slip in... grace.

Friday

We pause for sleep
for love filled dreams
tonight there is dirt
under my nails
and longing under my skin
half between the equinox
and beltane
so much done
yet so much remains
and under stars i am still
dreaming of you...


what if we made holy
ev'ry hour a mass
all bread and wine-- god

The Word

Today at the funeral I experienced Christ. I experience him in so many ways these days. But not like a person, not really. Or maybe I should say not as another person. This experience is the experience of life itself, and the experience of the person of Jesus is in my person, in the people around me. How to explain this? Verbum caro factum est. That's incarnation, that word of God in the Bible, in history, in heaven... In life. In the skin.

Like it, love it, own it

From an e-mail written to Anne Niemiec on the death of Joannes Paulus Secundus Pontifex Romae


I make peace with Catholicism just in time for the pope to die.

I admit that I actually never liked him. He did some decent things and stood up for justice in other people's countries but he centralized the running of the Catholic church and then controlled things like a fascist. He saw the world in black and white and never even considered ordination or married priests or women. His policies toward gays and reproductive rights were complete barbaric.

I'm having a hard time missing him, Annie.

And yet, I'm still touched by how he died. He did his best according to what he felt was God's will, and whatever he did, however much I disliked him, I also respected him, and I honor him at his death. Or maybe I'm just being magniminous because he is dead, and we're getting a new pope. I was born when Paul VI was still pope, so this is my third pope, but he's the only one I was conscious of. You and Megan and lots of other folks... Kevin and Danielle... he's the only pope you've ever know. No one had a sense of history so I bet everyong thinks of the way he does things, his Catholcism as THE CATHOLICISM. I never liked it. I'm glad it's over.

I meant to write in response to what you wrote me, but here I am rambling about this church, the one that I am a part of. I was thinking, Annie: you can love something without liking it. Without admiring it. I wondered if that was the way I felt about the Catholic Church, and America. But that's not it. I think maybe there's something even past love. Like the knowledge that you belong to something regardless if you feel love for it or not. I belong to this big, ridiculous church. I belong to and love the Anglican church. Maybe one day I will love the Catholic Church, but for now it's enough not to hate it.

-- ME

Tonight

From what I keep hearing the Pope is dying. No, really dying. Not the suspicion that he was gradually going. Everything is shutting down in him. He can scarcely make the sign of the cross. And all of this as I come to accept my Catholicism again.

Do you know last week I wouldn't even think of praying for the Pope. What harm has he done me? No, really? I don't know him, and he doesn't know me. Even on my most Catholic day I never thought much about the Pope, and I can't think of Popes now. i know there are Catholics, many whom I will see and have known, touched at this moment, sad for this moment, lighting candles, saying rosaries, feeling like their losing their holy father. And for them they are. I don't feel that way at all.

So what do I pray for? I pray for them. I pray for people losing their father. I pray for him. He has done a good work, he has served his vision of God in sincerity of heart. Many have loved him. He says, and I believe, that he has loved them. No matter how I feel about his politics, the mystery of being a bishop is something I cannot unravel. I can only respect it.

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob

This morning at meditation, I am reminded of the injunction in the Zohar to, always upon rising and at the beginning of prayer, contemplate the three Patriarchs, the innovators of prayer: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. These there personify the qualities of love, judgement and beauty. To ground oneself in these three things: love, judgment, beauty is a powerful thing. I am all to eager to contemplate the trinity of ease, pleasure and self aggrandizement

Fold

And some time in the middle of praying and candlelighting the bitterness that was always there is lifted, the division I always felt is healed. I look around. These are all mine. All of this has a claim on me. I do not resist it. These people are as much mine as anyone else. There is no sentiment here, but a wonderful discovery. Like it or not, and i often don't. I am a Catholic. I was the first of my friends to loudly and decisively leave the church. Most of them ho hum about it, thinking about not going, not knowing how they feel. The truth is that Catholicism, or, for that matter, Anglicanism, anything ism has little to do with isms and everything to do with the people around you. Are you tied to them, or not. It is hard for any two people to get along. Three's a great challenge. Anything more than five and you've got a mess on your hands. But churches are hundreds and thousans and millions depending upon how you define church, and they exist for not just a year, but centuries, millenia. To feel the tie of two thousand years, to love the people around you despite everything, is to enter into the true mystery and lose all anger.

Fold

Something happened in those three days, the Triduum. Something happened amidst the candles ,the incense, the ritual. Not just the rituals in the Catholic Church, but in my Anglican one, and in my house, on my own. Something happened this Lent.

I became a Catholic again.

I thought that my issues with the church were only about a couple of years old, but I realize I have been bitter my whole life, and now, suddenly, the bitterness is lifted and these people are my people. That is really what religion is about. And so, with a great deal of trepidation, I admit to being Catholic again.

This does not mean that I will

1. become a Conservative
2. attend the Catholic parish anymore than I did in the past

or

3. pretend that the church isn't just as mysoginistic, homophobic and behind the times in its doctrines as it always was.

What it does mean is that:

1. religion is more than what's on the page of the cathechism and
2. Faith is not cerebral or logical.

What it does mean is that

I am not bitter.

Sacred

The tub is cleaned. I am about to make the bath with the salts and milk, with herbs and
incense. This is a bath of purification.

Today we don’t eat. Eatings not always necessary. The normal way isn’t always
necessary. Sometimes it muddles the mind. It is the Eve of Purim, it is Maundy Thursday.
It is the beginning of the Full Moon. Which am I celebrating? I don’t know. Silence.
Silence and peace. This is not a fast. Yom Kippur. Eat nothing, drink nothing. That is
fasting. Today we drink tea, water, juices. It is a day of purification. Cleanse my will, my
mind, my heart, my flesh. Prepare me. What am I here for? I don’t always know as I pour
the water. Maybe it doesn’t matter that I know. Maybe it only matters that I am here.

Feet

I did see you Sunday, in the palm procession. you looked like a mouse, or a rabbit, with those huge eyes and that sort of woebegone expression. You look like a Charles Dickens character. I always want to give you a bowl of soup or something. I didn't speak to you or touch you. I chose to ignore you. I had forgotten the one reason we are in this world is to love. We ought to show love at every opportunity. Every moment we have. Me, I thought, nothing has ever come of me showing love in this place. Everytime I put my hand out, my wrist is slapped.

The choir is singing before all of us as we go into the church. My God, it is too cold out here. It's snowing. Too cold for this.

And I am thinking, "Why should I do anything? Why should I even acknowledge him?" He looks as if he needs it, but if I don't do something, someone will. My God, my God, when will I learn. It isn't my responsibility to make everyone happy. This once... I will not do anything. Nothing I've ever done, especially for you, has ever lead anywhere.

Today I read in Sharon Cameron's book:

"Observe the impatience of your mind. Your mind wants to get ahead of where it is. Let me put it to you (plainly)... there is no destination to speak of.." Sister Dassaniya... said, "If you keep your attention on your feet, you can't be conceited."

Reading Left 2

By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it. I write because life does not appease my appetites and hunger. I write to record what other erase when I speak.
(Anzaldua 169)


There was Joyce and then Nicole and then others. My life couldn't be protected for very long. Friends never seem to let me be protected from anything. Everyone always wants to come out to me, and so there it is, for me to deal with, and how I feel and how the Church feels. The Church has already told me what is right and what is wrong. All of the Christendom that I grew up with told me. The Bible says so, we've been told. I know right from wrong. If my mind knows then why doesn't my heart care? When Nicole and Jennifer are in a fight, why do I want the fight to resolve? Why do I think what they have is wholesome? Why do I want them to have a happy ending. I need to know there is another way. I don't want it for myself, but I want to know that it exists, that it is valid, that the walls that were set around us are put up by men and not by God. The world I was brought up in was full of a goodness tinged with bigotry. Good girls like good boys. But the world I live in is becoming one where good girls like good girls and I like being left alone and seeing my friends happy. I read a book, to read if there is another world, a truer one, a place with more options.

He looked at me with his mouth open and his dark eyes very big... I laughed and grabbed his head... But this time when I touched him something happened in him, and in me which made this touch different form any touch either of us had ever known... Joey raised his head, and we kissed.
(Baldwin, 14)


To be straight and especially religious and straight, to read Giovanni's Room is to leave behind one sort of innocence and enter another. The moment I consent to read past chapter one, without reservations, without headshakes, without drawing a line between myself and the sexuality of the character is the moment I at least in part consent to be gay for the duration of the book, to hear a voice not heard before. Here I am in the course of two days, reading the most passionate love story I've ever read.
And then, in the end, Giovanni is dead. Giovanni is Baldwin's first overtly gay character but not the last. Whatever innovation the Black and bisexual Baldwin might have flouted, the one he never flouts is that having engaged in the heady world of homosexuality, someone must pay, someone must die. There must be a tragedy.
I look in on the window of the party.
Jennifer and Nicole are still fighting.
I need another way.

Why do I need another way, Dean?
Until you are free, I am not free. Don't you see that?

Reading Left: Part One

After working through college as a church sacristan, Dean applied to remain employed by this Catholic church at this Catholic university. Knowing the university and the Church's policy on homosexuality, he has simply opted to keep his sexual preference and his boyfriend to himself. I know Dean. Dean is not Dean's real name. He has everything to do with many of the literacy events in my young and slightly leftist life.



1.

Dean, let me reconstruct your face before I begin this. The reconstruction is a hard one, for one moment I look in your eyes and there is a sadness, another joy, and then there is the pride that is nearly as bad as the sycophancy. How to say the things I want to say to you. There's never been time. You see me in a church when you see me at all. My world is books. From the Bible to the Advocate the words I read have changed me, and as I change, so does what I read. This is the circle of literacy that makes the words from my mouth and the words out of my pen those of a leftist and a liberal.
Being born Black, Hispanic, Third World, female, gay or anything else that would be perceived as a minority, as something disenfranchised, does not make one an activist. That is my problem with you. I would expect that it would, that I am outraged and loud and longing because I am Black. Maybe not. Maybe it is because I am me. And I expect you to shout because you are what you are, because you showed me once and then never brought it up again. Does this make me naive or you weak? Or is there something in the middle?
I am holding to what Harold Washington said when he was mayor of Chicago, that Black people must be fairer than fair. That after a history of enforced bondage, rape, killings and misuse we, fortunately or not, have lost the right to carry this vengeance on anyone else. Because we've seen much misfortune, we are obliged to see it in others and stand up against it, as if it were our own. And so I could very well be a fool to think that I am angrier than you, though I open my mouth and say things out loud, and you sit on your hands and take it all in.

Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.
(Catechism, 566)

I am angry when I write this and angry with you for sucking it up and plastering yourself to a wall. There used to be so much color in you, and now it is gone. Sometimes there is such a rage in me I think I will explode. But maybe my out loud rage is better. Maybe it's safer than what smolders in you, beneath quiet eyes.

The act of writing is the act of making soul, alchemy. It is the quest for the self, for the center of the self, which we women of color have come to think of as the "other"-the dark, the feminine. Didn't we start writing to recognize this other within us? We knew we were different, set apart, exiled from what is considered "normal" white-right. And as we internalized this, exiled we came to see the alien within us and too often, as a result, we split apart from ourselves and each other. Forever after we have been in search of that self, the "other" and each other.

(Anzaldua 169)


That is why I write, but that is why I speak as well. Why I act. I know you've made the trade off, to shut your mouth and have a very little. The church job is so comforting to you, what the Church says is good to you for the most part. When I say a thing I see how it shocks you. You're not the first to open your mouth and gape, to wonder why I didn't play the game, why I will not shut my mouth.

Andrew's End

I got an e-mail. Actually, about six of us got an e-mail from Andrew at Andrew's Life officially saying that his blog had come to an end.

Well, here is Witch's Blood, still alive, and often written in sporadically. There was a time when I needed to post and I needed comments everyday, and there was a marvelous community of bloggers right here, at WB. Now is a time when I post once a week, and usually don't get comments. New people don't come very often, or if they do, they don't come again. And while we're being honest, I generally don't read other people's blogs very often.

Blogs and books have lives. They exist in different incarnations in different places. Sometimes many people are reading, and then again sometimes no one is. Sometimes all emotion is written into them, and then sometimes very little is written for a long time. But the way a blog does differ from a book is that it is never finished. This is never it. Witch's Blood today is what it is today, this article, this moment. And what it will be tomorrow. I can't often say.

Saturday i i

You have come back home
in this new skin things change now
and this house is new

tear down these rafters
knock down the walls and the floor
only you remain

The major problem this week was writing, that I had finished working on something and didn't know. I have been trying to lengthen Colossus of Rhodes, but I think it's done now for the most part. It will be the shortest thing I've ever written. Things are always changing. My writing style is changing. It's like I am always changing without asking my permission.

Saturday

I haven't written here all week. I've been writing other places, for other things. But the week was wonderful, the week was sacred.

The room still smells of incense after Shabbos prayers. Everyone here is purified. All minds are clear. The week comes to an end in holy peace.

Saint James is having a bookstore sale. The bookstore has been shut for a while. So I bought two rosaries, one of blue glass that was only five dollars, the one I'd always wanted, black beads, that was only one buck. It was a day of sales. At the incense shop a box of Nag Champa which ought to be at least-- on a good day-- six or seven dollars is there for two. The woman at the counter slips one of my bills back to me.

On the bus I take out the bag a sniff the incense. It is rich and deep. The boy across from me, black hair, black rimmed spectacles says, "What kind is that?" I pass it to him.

"That's the only kind you get. That's the good stuff he says."

I've seen him before, I think, last week he was going on a protest rally when the President came.

Monday

I’m not ready for class tonight. I’m so tired. I want to go right to sleep. I know that being
in class will wake me up, though.

This is a different type of tired. When I got out of bed I didn’t know if I could do all the
things I needed to do, wanted to do. This is a pleased weariness of a day fulfilled.

I thought there was so much I would have to write, but I have written all day after the last few weeks when I would just write about writing.

By the Pen

Everything in me, including the muddled feeling I get when trying to work on this current story tells me that it does not want to be written now. I wanted three stories to go together to make a whole one. I thought I knew exactly how it should go. But often a story knows of its own how it's supposed to go, and I have to listen to it. I will stop forcing this story long enough to hear what I'm supposed to do next.

Creation

There is this story on my mind. I want to write it, but lately I am sketching out maps and sculpting the story. Creation happens in multiple ways.

Revelation

While in a trance at church this morning I discovered that in my last life I was a gay hairdresser named Jean-Paul who was all the rage in Manhattan during the late 70's. But I died of a drug overdose in 1976, passing out in the middle of performing the Funky Chicken at Studio 54.

So here I am.

History Lesson

Today's bitch of the week is Anne Boleyn, mother of Queen Elizabeth I and second wife to King Henry VIII

In the early part of the sixteenth century, Anne Boleyn stopped at nothing to marry King Henry VIII and seize the power of his wife and current queen, Catherine of Aragon. After having persuaded Henry to commit an act of bigamy in marrying her, move against the papacy and cast out his own wife while disinheriting her daughter, Anne was coronated queen of England.

While Catherine of Aragon lay dying, she sent a letter to Henry telling the husband who had abandoned her that she loved and forgave him and longed only to see his face once again, but when Catherine died, Anne dressed in yellow and threw a parade.

Less than a year later, Anne Boleyn was beheaded in the Tower of London and replaced by yet another femme fetale, her maid, Jane Seymour.

Serves the bitch right!

On Saturday

I confessed to being consumed with a need for purpose. Having accomplished a few small things i am surprised that I am not content. I want more and more and I want to count for something. I am always haunted by the need to do something needful.

Witch's Blood

I realized that I had not answered one of your questions, which was probably the most important one: how do you write? Almost as soon as I'd written that I realized that I hadn't told you, and it gave me a whole weekend to think about it.

First now, you must be slightly off because you must be possessed by your people. That's what works. Nothing else will.

I sculpted from the time I was seven until I was nineteen. Then it just stopped. It was gone. I tried to bring it back, but it didn't come back. And then, after I had written A very poor story can come, but a good one comes when the writer is possessed. Most people are afraid to be too possessed, to live in their imaginations too much. There is a mystic belief that our creations create us and that we ourselves create God being his creation. I adhere to this. The Zen Buddhist say that everything that is, is, meaning nothing is fake, so I wholeheartedly know my imagination is real, and useful. I think this is the biggest hindrance to a writer. We block ourselves from imagination and attempt to live in "the real world" meaning, some world that someone else has imagined for us. But there are many worlds we can imagine for ourselves.

Before this gets long I will cut it, but say that what ones puts in her imagination is a powerful shaper. I grew up on British television and the British novel, especial fantasy. I grew up on Lewis and Tolkien, and then Dick King Smythe and Susan Cooper. The secret, to me, is that I always write as a fantasists. Tolkein said that "Faery" was the whole world when we ourselves are enchanted, and so Jamnia and Izmir are really fantasy places. I grew up on children's fantasy, and I try to tell grown up stories as if I were telling them to children: only children who can read about sex and drugs and doubt and what the not.

Helen, in your own native country you have a great wealth of true story and great storytellers to delve into. I just saw the film Beautiful Thing again, and came away impressed by something we can't get in the States: a portrayal of life which is honest and lyrical all at once. Americans feel funny about being American. What I mean is, we do not have the sense of history you do. Our land is just as old. All land, but we are new in it. We live, rather, in the shadow of a dream made by New York on one side and Hollywood on the other, having a slight problem with self honesty. So American stories tend to come out warped and full of special effects or sarcasm that isn't funny. I generally stay away from this.

A few years ago when I set out to seriously write out our lives in the middle of America I couldn't find them. These stories hadn't been told. There were stories about the East Coast and West Coast, about the South. But not about the rest of us, which is most of us. If there ever were, people were living on farms in the middle of cornfields with windmills turning in the distance.

Foolishness.

And then, when I began watching British films and reading English novels again I was surprised. There WE WERE. For better or worse, this was the life I knew. Northwest Ohio is more like Manchester than Manhattan and this part of Indiana is closer to Liverpool than LA.
Jamnia, and my life had gone through some of it's greatest changes, major upheavals, there I was, suddenly sculpting again.

This is what art is like. I may dream of a character. I might see him on a bus, or he might take my order at a restaurant. Then I am haunted by him. I wonder what he is doing. He begins to tell me. I take up a pen and write as him. It is like love, but more than love. I put him or her or a whole town or scenario away, knowing one day they will come up. The visit, now and again while I bathe, or while I make toast, in the middle of a class, while fooling around at the computer. And then, at last, I am writing them. Often I have written a story, thrown it away and then, years later, picked it up again. The writing comes in so many ways. It is a natural force. It is a whirlwind.
Often I think that it is my religion more than anything else.

Inside

Three months
going on for
still i want more of you
still i never tire of you
i want to take you face
in my hands
bring you to the place
i lay my head
place you on the bed
slip inside of you...

Dream

I dreamed that I was lying in my bed,
and you were there with me.
Hungry,
you took out the feast, the bread and the wine
chocolate,
Valentine candy from the day before
and I was your plate
you licked me up and down
and could not be sated

After Valentine

Tonight I burnt my useless wands. All of life is magic. I wake up in such a mood. I want to say so much. I want to pray for so much, and there are no words for it. The Spirit will simply have to suffice. There is so much love in me. Love for a would be lover, love for friends, love for friendly people, love for the folks coming into my life. There is even love for the people I pity who are so goddamned sad, and cold. There is such a longing. I want it all to be alright. Somehow I know it will be. I say a prayer for that, weave a spell for the happiness of the world. Somewhere, somehow, I am part of that happiness.

I am so in love with life. I love the rain that falls and the weather warming up. I love the seminarian laughing as I run across the street with the change of the red light. I love chocolates with truffle sauce in their center and good wine and cigarettes and coffee. I love sleeping. I would love fucking if I had someone to fuck, so instead I love the people who get to fuck all the time. I love time... as much as I fear it. The world is full of fear and the fear is full of grace. If there weren't grace and love the world couldn't go around.

For Saint Valentine's Day

haven’t you had enough
all his bullshit and all his stuff
you give and give and he never
says he loves you
he can never say thank you
you understand? i hope you do
you can get down on your knees and pray
get down on your knees and say hail marys
and pick him berries and squeeze the grapes for his wine
or you can get on your knees and suck his balls
until he comes all over the walls
and still--


he won’t love you

this is me when i love you
you’re like my mother
i could be nursed by you
you’re like my little sister and i would nurture you
or you’re like the significant other
and i’m like the lusty brother
and i could just fuck you

Lent

Another Lent had begun, but i'm more different than ever. This is a time of questions. There are so many things I've taken for granted.

This is the second year in a row I went to Ash Wednesday Mass at my parish, Saint James Episcopal, and not Sacred Heart. I stood at the lectern reading the first lesson from the book of the prophet Joel, "Rend your hearts and not your garments..." We kneel as the ashes are crossed on our foreheads. We kneel to receive the chalice. The chalice, the dish of bread, the dishes of ashes: these are all the same, but I am not. We are not. And so they don't mean the same things.

Lent strikes at the heart of the faith I have practiced all my life. But it feels like many lives and many faiths and this year I want to know what it means now. What does it mean to repent? What does it mean to sin? What is mercy? What is dying? What is rising? I don't think God will give only one answer, if he should give any answer at all. God gives questions. Questions are his friends.

And still

Two months, eight weeks

is that fifty days... no, sixty, sixty plus
since I've seen you
and still I think of you
still I remember you
and wish for you
and wish you remember me.

This morning, I woke in the soft covers of my
bed, aching
and wondering if you wondered about me

Fire

Rage is good. Fire is good. We need to rub the fuel together and let it burn.

But I have learned we also need to learn to control it, to hone it, to channel it and to even know when it's best to let that flame go down to a steady ember.

Once we have learned to build the fire, then we need to know how to tend it, to keep us and everyone around us warm. Or else it will go out of control and consume everything around us.

Benediction

Holy Mother, in whom we live, move and have our being, from you all things emerge, and unto you all things return...Open our hearts this blessed day, Touch our bodies and our minds. Walk with us through the gates of power, in shadow and starlight, in fire meeting earth, in wind on the ocean and the sweet kiss of life.
Blessed be our journey.

T. Thorn Coyle


It was merely curiosity,
there are so many of those.

Are you there,
were you there?

turns to will you be there?
hope you are there!
You must be there.

My love surpasses obsession
becomes revolution and resistance.

These new questions?

How soft is your skin?
What lies within?
Are you lips sweet to kiss?

everyone should have a love
like this!

Need

For a while now I've been trying to say why I write, now that this writing is coming to fruition, why I am so urgent about being published, about not putting down the pen. But I have not had the words merely because I have not had the rage.

There is a different kind of rage than the small minded anger that fuels us for a season. There is an inherited, urgent rage when one sees that something must be done, and that it is left to us to do that something. Or, at least, part of the something. So, I read the prophets who raged on before me. Most of them women, many of them women of color who know there is much left to be done.

I write to record what other erase when I speak, to rewrite the stories others have miswritten about me, about you. To become more intimate with myself and you.

It's too easy, blaming all on the white man or white feminists or society or on our parents. What we say and what we do ultimately comes back to us, so let us own our responsibility, place it in our hands and carry it with dignity and strength. no one's going to do my shitwork, I pick up after myself.

-- Gloria Anzaldua

Witch's Blood

Words upon words form stories and stories are the links of memories. We begin and end in our stories and our roots stretch deep as the stories we are told. Our futures are as infinite as the stories we invent to prophecy them. That is why it is so important to write, and so vital to retain memory. We are only as good as our memories.

Words Live

I click over for just a moment to learn more about Anzaldua. She just died last year, and I didn't know she was alive until yesterday. But her voice sends me raging. She is so alive in me. She is alive write now. This is the power of words. This is why we must not give up writing.

I have to write because if I don't write what I see then no one else will. I have nothing to lose by writing what I see. This is why people of color must write because we can because we have much less to lose.

Mouth

To paraphrase Gloria Anzaldua; I write because every time I open my mouth, there is someone coming behind me to erase every word I say. I have heard some authors speak of writing giving one immortality. I don't believe this is why people of color write. We write for now, out of a simple need to have life write now, at this moment.

Important

I haven't written anything in here worthwhile for some time. What will I write now? Will I write about writing? Yes, about how it is difficult work, but necessary. About how I feel illegitimate writing? Even now, as I type i think, What are you are you writing? What are you saying? What is this?

I think, this time last year I was writing things and people were responding. Buit I haven't had the time to write much of anything. So little response, and I haven't had the need.

I am full of writing. Writing for classes, writing books, writing e-mails to my publishers. I am mad with writing, but I suspect, not with the necessary writing.

I am writing here right now, at this moment, because I think I would scream if I didn't. Often I have felt like I am about to scream unless I can write, like I will die if I don't, like these words are absolutely important.

Imbolc

Tonight I light the candles and begin the chants. It is Imbolc again. I celebrate by putting up last year's post. It's a good way of looking back, and as I go forward, looking behind becomes crucial...

I can grow
despite what you know
you might not recognize me tomorrow
yes, I can change, inspite of all they say
become something strange
and beautiful
like joy!
like joy !
-- Liz Phair

I think I heard that there’s gonna be rain today. The sky is a deep grey like a thick blanket and the white of the snow is dulled by the absense of light. I don’t mine because for the first time in a long time it is actually warm. The fact that I would call 37 degrees warm points to just how could it has been. Second day in the season of Imbolc and I can feel the breath of Kore as she ascends up from the land of the dead. After a long season living below amongst the shadows the goddess begins her return.

I know the feeling.

Sometimes the mythology of the faiths before resonate more with me than Christian myth. I am not sure what others call “religious faith” or religious truth, but to me it is what you recognize, what resonates with you. In a few weeks Lent will begin again. I’ve only known of a Roman Lent, never experienced it as an Episcopalian. For six weeks the generally offering up of things we didn’t really need in the first place, heavier than usual Catholic guilt trips, drummed of tears and emotion for the death of Jesus on Good Friday, and then a quick and speedy resurrection we don’t know what to do with. Three days in the tomb, and it the three days don’t even last three full days. Easter comes, we eat chocolate, and after this no one really knows how to apply this to real life.

The season of Imbolc is different. Death and resurrection are not once and for all things. They come and they go, and resurrection is not an easy task, it is a long, seven week one. There is repentance, but there is little guilt. Guilt must serve a purpose. Acknowledged, it is time to put it away. Not put away, it only enslaves, or else it makes us callous. We learn to live with it while not choosing to change. The repentance does not come before the death and resurrection. It begins at the moment of resurrection, the moment when the Queen of the Dead in the underworld is given her cosmic green light, and begins her ascent back to the land of light.

Repentance, starting over again, waking up... that’s a slow process. Repentance IS the resurrection.

Mercy

This morning, as I'm dressing to say the morning prayer, I hear about our old friend, the Catholic Church. A gay couple has sent their child to a Catholic school and this has become, of course, an issue.

And old priest is talking about how if something isn't done, then the matter will go the Vatican. He says, the Church has great compassion for gays provided they look upon their homosexuality as a defect and a cross, not as a way of happiness. As long as these two men do not acknowledge each other and, better, if they should split up, that church will accept them with open arms. Says this old priest, they must decide if they are Catholic or homosexual first.

But Roman Catholics are not the only Catholics, and as I shake my head over this bit of hatred I am reminded of it. And we Anglican Catholics have our own hatreds and hardnesses that we dress up in holiness. When I hear these doctrines of demons and gospels of hatred spewed out by poisonous old men, I immediately begin to say William Laud's prayer, as good now for an Anglican as it was four hundred years ago.



Gracious Father, we pray for thy holy Catholic church. Fill it with all truth, in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in any thing it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy son our Savior. Amen.

Academia

Okay, it feels like I love academia DESPITE academia. There is always one class that is a let down, sometimes all of them. The reading is often pointless and the professors are ridiculous. I walk the halls of Wiekamp Hall and see so many hot looking people. I mean, tasty! Tasty and clueless and a little frightened. But these hot peopel are never English majors and whenever I step into class I am greeted by the biggest assortment of fat, pimply, wanna by Ernest Hemingway sideshows you have ever seen! Not a looker among them!

Communication is off. Everyone seems vaguely afraid of everyone else. It can all be a little less than perfect and yet... and yet... and... yes, I know that it's good to be here.

Witch's Blood

Witch's Blood

I'm beginning to love proofreading so much that I have to remember to do actual writing. Now I'm proofing a new story, and I've been longing to do this for a while.

I never proof until the story has sat cold for at least half a year. This usually translates to more than a year, and then it takes a while to write the initial draft. I am always writing from the place I am in at the time. So reading a rough manuscript is more accurate (for me) than reading my own journals. I say things better when I am saying them fictionally.

And I learn things.

What have I learned?

That I am not sure if I have faith anymore. Faith as defined by a church. There are things more important, and more sustaining that faith. And they are all around me. Blessing me.

sweetness

For the night she is--
and who can blame you?
an icon
and she is also candy
there is so much sweetness in her
past that wrapper
and you wish to God you could
be part of that sweetness
as you push her up against the washer
after all
you must be sweet
if such a sweet thing likes you--
loves you?
no, not quite
but this is enough
for tonight.
Bigger and bigger inside her small tightness
the whiteness and brightness
of a big bang
if you... if you...
push just a little
push just a little harder
harder now
you'll break through into that sweetness
oh, my God!
that deepness
you have felt before
that puts you on the balls of your feet
then brings you to the floor
and then stuffing the weapon back into your
pants
it has done its damage
once again
and still you did not
quite get the wrapper off
all that sweetness

I have in the mail a little slip with frequent flier miles
i never fly on airplanes
i never really fly anywhere at all
nothing is holding me here
not that i feel felt here
no, i feel rooted here,
deep in this earth
but that doesn't mean
that i don't feel the wings
growing out of my back
just at the thought of--
the knowledge that i can fly

life is so uncertain
beautiful, uncertain
deep like the edge of a cliff
one could fly
life is lovely and terrible
there is no security
until we die

The First Prophecy

I am either the bad English major, or the bad American citizen. I only buy books when I have to. I only buy things when I really, really want to. I've had this talk with several book lovers. When I talk about checking a book out from the public library, they look at me strangely because I don't buy it. When a new book comes out and I say I can't wait to take it from the library, they think it's odd that I don't rush out to spend thirty dollars on a hardback. Or it's just odd that I am not willing to put down money on a book I don't even know if I'll like. Everything I own I love. None of it is frivolous. They say, "But I have to buy it, or else I just don't feel like I own it." But you don't own it. How can you own another person's words? Americans, how can you own much of anything. Nowadays people even pay money to have stars named after them thinking they can own that to. Everyone wants to buy up this and that so that they can buy up a little security.

My problem is laziness. I am far too lazy to work eight hours a day behind a desk and exhaust myself getting all this money. And I have noted that there is a link between all of this money spend in all of these places, and all of the time spent behind a desk or in an office.

So I have made my choice.

Writing.... Again

The rough draft of The Fish Hook's Daughter ended with, amongst other things, two of the main characters being carried off into the mountains by giant crows. Such is the power of fantasy. That rough draft will sit on it's... wherever rough drafts sit, until I'm ready to look at it. For now I am still amazed by the details that go into printing one's first novel. It seems like everyone has a book out, but if the truth must be known, out of all those everyones there's only one that I know, and I don't know her very well, and her publisher stiffed her. I know me, and for me this is long, difficult work. Here Jamnia sits, still not in book form, still not out for the world to see and I count that it's nearly a year since I first set out trying to publish it. This is standard time for all books, at least, but that doesn't make this one seem any shorter.

And this doesn't mean that I stop writing, or thinking. I began gazing over this next project. Imagine, actually trying to finish what I started. I did finish it, once. I even named it. The title was the The Low Countries and, as one might expect with such a ghastly double entente, the book was so bitter and sad that my computer rebelled and destroyed half of it. So I've been sitting around with half a good novel saying, "Finish me, finish me. And add a little sugar while you're at it."

I begin to peruse this tonight, and am surprised when I find myself grinning.